Clinton condemns shooting of Baton Rouge officers

CINCINNATI (AP) — Hillary Clinton on Monday called for an end to the “madness” after the death of three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, condemning a series of recent shootings involving police and vowing to hold those who kill police officers legally accountable.

“They represent the rule of law itself, if you take aim at that and at them you take aim at all of us,” Clinton told civil rights activists at the annual convention of the NAACP. “There can be no justification, no looking the other way.”

The Democratic presidential candidate condemned the killing of three Louisiana law enforcement officers, the latest in a recent string of shootings involving black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and police officers in Dallas. She said anyone who kills a police officer or acts as an accomplice must be held accountable.

“We have difficult, painful, essential work ahead of us to repair the bonds between our police and our communities and between and among each other,” she said.

A former Marine ambushed police in Baton Rouge on Sunday, killing three law enforcement officers in the attack. Three other officers were wounded, one critically. The shooting, the fourth high-profile deadly encounter involving police over the past two weeks, added to the tensions across the country between the black community and police.

Clinton also acknowledged that the violence has gone both ways, pointing out the socio-economic disparities that have plagued the African-American community to the nearly uniformly black audience.

“Another hard truth at the heart of this complex matter is that many African-Americans fear the police,” she said. “I can hear you.”

Clinton has proposed a series of reforms to the criminal justice system, including developing …